Venus flytrap

Ingenious mechanism still baffles Darwinists

Venus flytraps (Dionaea muscipula) have long fascinated people all around
the world. But it might surprise many that they grow naturally only in a tiny part
of the world, in a 1100-km (700-mile) region along the coast of North and South
Carolina. They live only in humid, wet and sunny bogs, so they can’t get many
nutrients from the soil. That is why they must obtain nutrition from insects. The
plant is named after the pagan Roman goddess of love, and apparently by implication,
seduction.

The plant grows to 20–30 cm (8–12 in) tall, produces a round cluster
of small white flowers, and leaves 8–15 cm long. The leaves include the traps
which can quickly fold on their midline to snap shut on an unwary insect, when it
brushes against one of the six trigger hairs. Then the trap snaps shut faster than
we can blink, in about a tenth of a second.1
The leaf then secretes a red sap that digests the insect in about 10 days, and opens
out again when finished. After eating three or four insects, the trap withers.

Until recently, scientists had not worked out how the trap works. But now, with
a high-speed camera and clever mathematics, a team led by Dr Mahadevan of Harvard
University has shown how.2 The leaf
changes from convex (outward-curving) to concave (inward-curving) when the trap
is sprung. These researchers showed that the trap works somewhat like the way that
a tennis ball cut in half can quickly flip inside out when pushed beyond a certain
energy barrier.1 This elegant geometrical model makes
accurate predictions, and could be scaled up to non-muscular engines.

The lead researcher said, ‘Our study still leaves us baffled
about one question that motivated him—how did this mechanism evolve?’

With the flytraps, the snapping depends entirely on finely tuned geometry. If a
certain ratio is too small,3 the trap
will close too smoothly and not snap; if too large, then the energy barrier is too
high and the leaf will take too long to snap. The closure is started when the insect
brushes the trigger hairs, forcing a tiny amount of water into the leaf, quickly
taking it past the energy barrier. Also, the succulent leaf has lots of water between
the cells, and this quickly damps vibrations.

Even Darwin wrote a book about plants that catch insects, and called the Venus flytrap
‘one of the most wonderful in the world.’4
The lead researcher said, ‘Our study still leaves us baffled about one question
that motivated him—how did this mechanism evolve?’1
and called plants ‘nature’s ultimate hydraulic engineers.’2
Of course, there is no reason to believe they evolved at all!

First, while insects are ‘living’ in the sense of modern Western biology,
the biblical authors never considered them so. The Bible uses a specific Hebrew
phrase nephesh chayyāh (נֶפֶשׁ חַיָּה = living souls/creatures) for vertebrates, but never
for insects (or plants).

Second, this amazing design could have a non-predation-related function of, for
example, catching scattered seeds. Indeed, some spiders even today catch pollen
in their webs for food. But they must now eat insects as well, possibly because
the pollen now lacks an essential nutrient.5
Before the earth and its vegetation was cursed after the Fall (Genesis 3:17), spiders
may have thrived on pollen caught in webs spun for that purpose.

Third, the fly-catching mechanism could have been a latent feature programmed into
the genes by the Creator who foreknew the Fall. This affected the ‘whole creation’
(Romans
8:19–22).6,7

References

How a Venus flytrap snaps up its victims, New Scientist185(2484):17, 29 January 2005. Return to text.

Julie I. wrote: “Thank you so much for this site! I am very blessed already. I appreciate you sharing all these helps and resources. Especially the free ones. We are grateful!” Keep the free stuff coming. Support this site